Join us for the Opening Reception of Only a Signal Shown, curated by Daniel Nevers and Amanda Eicher, looks at free time and past times, with work by Samara Halperin, Erin Johnson, Camilla Newhagen, and Doug Garth Williams.

MacArthur B Arthur is pleased to present The Home Show, MacArthur B Arthur’s final exhibition.

The Home Show is about the domestic half of MacArthur B Arthur. It is about my relationship to the artists and curators I work with, how the dynamic of support is symbiotic- I get to live amongst changing beautiful ideas and objects, they get to present those ideas and objects to an audience. The audience with the most exposure to the art is always myself. I live with it; it goes away. Exhibitionism, as a word, sounds like it could be, ‘The condition afflicting the resident of a live-in gallery, whereby the occupant undergoes a cyclical re-framing of perception determined by the monthly influx, and dispersal, of objects whose combined signification synergistically displaces prior modes of comprehension.’ It could also mean exposing the parts of MacArthur B Arthur that are not normally exposed. The Home Show puts on display the peeked into ancillary facts, the hidden aspects of the rituals of living, collecting and organizing that make up my life. This is an homage to my changing perspective and the artist’s who have facilitated that shift as I transition the space from a gallery/home into a home environment. Each artist has been asked to make work that directly responds to, documents, reinterprets and re-imagines MacArthur B Arthur. I have asked Elizabeth Bernstein, Alex Clausen, Carey Lin, and Camilla Newhagen to document and intervene with the domestic aspects of the space.

Elizabeth Bernstein’s photos are culled from the everyday, the places where we establish our routines and build our lives. Within these environments, already crafted by the inhabitant, she spends time with the objects, manipulating and moving them around until they are built to reveal a psychology of vulnerability, intimacy, and longing. As much as they are about objects, place, a small gesture or glance; their essential aspect is in their ability to describe complex emotions that settle and shift along a nuanced continuum.

Alex Clausen manipulates furniture, arranging it to build a destabilizing experience between himself and the inhabitants as a way to explore relationships with them and their habitations, the spaces that we spend so much time designing and making our own. It is an obtuse and very literal way of exploring social, domestic and spatial frameworks.

Carey Lin asks in her paintings, ‘What does a sink say about the people who use it? What do they put into it in the course of a day or two? The document of a months-long call and response between the artist and the curator (and resident of the gallery space), resulted in kitchen sink portraits that investigate the temporary still lives that accumulate as we go about the daily business of living.’

Camilla Newhagen, borrow’s clothing and accessories from the drawers and closets of her family, friends and people she barely knows. She unsettles and re-imagines these worn materials – shaped and hardened by histories both personal and collective.

Kevin P. Clarke will have a piece that addresses a historical thread of domestic aesthetics, as historical markers and placeholders for narrative, imbued or implied, real and potential.

X Libris is an exhibition exploring the book as a mode of communication in flux. As we transition from the printed page to digital communication, our relationship to print changes as we enter the literary realm of binary code and multi-directional referencing and browsing. Once valued as a solitary activity requiring deep concentration, perusing written language is incrementally measured, and our attention fragmented. X Libris explores the book as a vulnerable, ephemeral, morphing form, in this time of accelerated transition to digital communication and “real-time.”

Swarm Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition “Beauty in Landscape; A Blockbuster Exhibition from the Permanent Collection of the Museum of Historical Makeovers” by Kathy Aoki on view from October 13 – November 25, 2012. “Invisible Gestures”, an installation by Camilla Newhagen, will be presented in the Project Space.

Kathy Aoki revisits her role as curator of the fictive Museum of Historical Makeovers in her second solo exhibition at Swarm Gallery. This time, Aoki presents work in multiple media — drawing, etching, photo, and painting — that cheekily centers around the concept of the Landscape. Learn about an ill-fated attempt by one artist to create a Hello Kitty Mount Rushmore on a Canadian cliff, reminisce about the Princess effect on the urban landscapes as depicted in editorial cartoons, and enjoy the beauty of watercolored mascara forestscapes.

In the Project Space, Camilla Newhagen builds on her performance-based practice of sculpture, photography and video and explorations of geological layering and material conditions. In her multi-media installation, a video of the artist in a cubicle-like structure will be presented. Her recorded actions relate to and communicate with various objects placed on the surrounding walls and floor. Her focus is the conceptual gap between place and object, and her concern is the physical impact of the wireless age on one’s body.

In its sixth year, the goal of Introductions 2012 is to showcase the talent of emerging artists in the San Francisco Bay Area, offering them exposure to the art community and beyond. This exhibition is a keystone of our 2nd Saturday Series, giving the public a chance to view the cutting edge of local art production. Selected from over 230 submissions, this year’s jurors — Sergio De La Torre, Valerie Imus, and Kimberly Johannson — chose 13 finalists for the conceptual & formal strength of the work presented. The exhibition includes an array of painting, drawing, sculpture, video, photography, and installation.

Camilla Newhagen works across mediums, creating works that engage ideas as seemingly diverse as portraiture, performance, gravity, and geological layering. Yet, her projects intersect through a sensitive use of materials and actions. Clothing plays an important role in her pieces, both as a stand-in for an individual and as a way of marking space and time: layers of clothing are stacked in a confined space, individual pieces are photographed as they are thrown one-by-one into a pile, or are propped up by a structure of two-by-fours. These simple actions serve as visual experiments in the relation between time and the human body.